Tomorrow begins the third leg of our trip: The Unknown. With no specifics in mind, we’ll be around Naha and Okinawa City and maybe a couple other little towns for all of April, trying to meet musicians and other people of interest.

Then in May we’ll hopefully go to Tokyo to hang out with Sigrunn, who may as well be our cousin now too. And on May 10, just as our visitors’ visas expire, we shall return home, triumphant and broke.

As part of our internship, we’re staying in a student apartment in the city of Urasoe, just north of Naha. It’s pretty dense by Okinawa standards, with a few major highways running through it, separated from the coast by a Marine base. Here’s the view from my room.

I finally went exploring yesterday in the rain, all alone with no map. I got lost, but along the way I found some rad playgrounds. Here’s a climbing wall and a zipline, taken from atop a rope pyramid.

I tried to follow some kids who I figured were heading home from our elementary school, which eventually led me to a different school. But in this ghetto park I passed was a Miyazaki-style climbing tree.

All the drains in the neighborhood run into this beautiful sewage water river. Look at this giant fish! There were dozens just chillin’ under a bridge. I was a bit distraught not knowing where the hell I was, but they calmed me down.

And then, a wonderful sight: JSL, our home-for-now, just above the river.